Night of the Living Deb Read online

  I took a seat on the edge of the bed and flipped through the pages of a journal, mostly blank, though a handful in the front were filled with doodles and scribbled poetry. At least it appeared to be poetry, a mixture of badly rhyming sonnets and haikus.

  I realized they weren’t meant for my eyes, or Brian would’ve shown them to me; but I couldn’t help reading one haiku written next to the barely decipherable rendering of a milk carton with expired scrawled across its label.

  rectangular box some kind of goo leaking out maybe it’s rotten

  Oh, God. I smiled.

  It was dreadful, but I loved it.

  More so because I had no idea Brian released his creativity this way, using words where I used paint. He’d never mentioned writing, and I wondered why. Was he embarrassed? Did he imagine I’d laugh at him? Did he not feel safe enough with me to share something like this?

  Or maybe he just wanted his privacy, something I could relate to well enough.

  As much as I ached to hold onto the book, I put it back in its hiding place. I wanted it to be there when he returned, so he could add more awful haikus to it. Maybe write a poem about me someday.

  I zoned in on the sock drawer. I had to give my mother credit for the suggestion. Honestly, who didn’t keep little things hidden beneath their panties or knee-highs?

  I had jewelry stashed in mine—a small jewelry box that held the diamond ear studs Mother had given me when I’d turned eighteen, along with some antique rings I’d inherited from my grandmother.

  I slid open Malone’s topmost drawer, revealing a plethora of Gold Toes and a half-dozen neatly folded pairs of preppy boxers. Feeling like a sneak, I gently ran my hand through the sea of socks, finding zilch. Then I slipped my fingers beneath his underwear and encountered something hard.

  I palmed it, drew it to eye level and stared, my breath quickening.

  It was blue.

  And square.

  A box from Tiffany & Co., a sight my mother had taught me to appreciate early on, and I still couldn’t stop the catch in my heart when I saw one, even if I had done my damnedest to ditch the “born to debut” attitude long ago.

  Did I think this had anything to do with Brian and the dead stripper?

  Of course I didn’t.

  Could I put it back without opening it up to see what was inside?

  Absolutely not.

  Pulse thudding in my ears, I plucked off the blue lid and saw what I imagined I’d see: a second box, this one velvet with a hinge.

  Of course, I opened that, too, and my breath caught at the sight of its contents.

  Wedged comfortably amidst the satin lining were two rings.

  One was a full circle bead-set diamond band; the other, a simple band in matching platinum.

  They had that antique look I loved and were gorgeous enough to make me gasp, no matter that I didn’t really care for jewelry.

  My brain tried valiantly to assimilate the facts as I saw them.

  My serious boyfriend of four months (and let’s forget that he dumped me, because I didn’t believe it).

  Crazy about each other (well, I was about him, and I assumed he felt the same about me, or at least he had before the “stripper incident”).

  Tiffany box hidden in sock drawer.

  Wedding bands.

  Could it be?

  As usual, my mind leapt to conclusions, unsupported by physical evidence, based solely on conjecture: Brian had elopement on his mind, forgoing the engagement thing entirely.

  He wanted to marry me, not some fly-by-night floozy.

  (I couldn’t for a minute buy that he’d pondered jetting to Vegas for a quickie wedding to Trayla Trash.)

  Except there was a slight catch in any dreams of our getting hitched, the biggest obstacle being that I had no inkling where Brian was.

  On impulse, I plucked out the band with the diamonds and slid it onto the third finger of my left hand, though it didn’t fit, being at least two sizes too large.

  Hmm.

  It would probably perfectly suit a more robust bride, however, say, Eleanor from Pittsburgh? That wedding was mere weeks away, and Malone was Matty’s best pal.

  Fudge.

  Cue lightbulb moment.

  Matty had told me that Brian was holding some “important hardware” for him, and the rings no doubt were it.

  Oh, waitress, I’ll take that reality check, please.

  Duh.

  How dopey could I get? Imagining Brian’s birthday surprise for me might be wedding bands and plane tickets to Vegas so we could be joined in holy matrimony by an Elvis impersonator.

  So much for my postcollege declaration that I was “Miss Independent” and might never tie the knot, huh?

  Though I realized this sudden epiphany about Malone had come when I felt so close to losing him.

  Why was that always the way?

  With a sigh, I slipped the ring off, put it back in the box then stuck the box in the drawer just as I’d found it, feeling a prick of disappointment, despite telling myself, Your day will come, Andrea Blevins Kendricks.

  And maybe it would, once I was with Malone again.

  Without further ado, I continued my poking, even glancing through the old Smithsonian magazine lying at the foot of Brian’s bed, pages dog-eared at articles about poisonous jellyfish—ooh, they were pretty!—the unsolved art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston with lots of color photos that I wished I had the time to pore over—and something on Lewis and Clark.

  I tugged open the slender drawer on his nightstand and found a card addressed to me, which I drew out of the envelope.

  The front depicted Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein, and inside it read: We were made for each other.

  Below that, he’d scrawled, “So true—opposites attract, so they say. You’re as open as the sky, and I’m steady like the rain. I love you, babe.”

  That was beautiful.

  Way better than his poetry.

  A gentle sigh escaped my lips, because it’s what I’d needed to hear, however the message was delivered.

  Brian loved me.

  The rest was madness.

  If only I knew how to fix it. My daddy was always so good at that, setting things to right, but I’d always seemed to make messes of everything.

  “Trust yourself, pumpkin,” he would’ve urged me, certain I could do anything if I put my mind to it.

  So I put my mind to it now.

  I kept the card, because I needed it; shoved it down in my bag so I wouldn’t lose it while I tossed the living room, looking for my elusive Holy Grail; which is when I heard a thump against the apartment door and noises in the hallway.

  I edged nearer the door, detecting the scuffle of feet and the muffled baritone of a male voice saying something akin to: “Lady, put it down now.”

  Followed by my mother’s drawl, raised to ear-splitting decibels, yelling, “Fire, fire, fire!”

  I hurried over to the peephole, squinting out to see a pair of men in blue uniforms wrestling with Mummy Dearest, who appeared to be using her umbrella to block their way to the door.

  Oh, crap.

  The fuzz had landed.

  And I was trapped.

  Chapter 13

  I’d never imagined my life could get any more pathetic than rifling through my missing boyfriend’s

  boxers.

  Incredibly, it did.

  Is there such a thing as reaching the depths of patheticness?

  And I must’ve taken the elevator, not the stairs, because the trip was very quick.

  Mother and I ended up at the Addison police station after a joyless ride in a cruiser that smelled of sweat and pine deodorizer, which wasn’t much of an improvement over Eau de Sock at Malone’s apartment.

  A pair of detectives from the Dallas P.D. joined our little coffee klatch in the office of the City of Addison’s police captain. The only thing that wa
s missing was actual coffee, which no one had offered us, though I didn’t often drink the stuff myself and imagined whatever they served here had to be pretty bad.

  No Miranda warning had been read to us—which left me feeling oddly disappointed—because we hadn’t been arrested, just asked to “come down to the station” so we could explain why we were in Brian Malone’s abode, particularly since the Dallas P.D. so desperately wanted to chat with him.

  The Addison patrolmen who’d shown up at Brian’s place—thanks to a phone call from a neighbor—assumed at first that I was a reporter, since local journalists had apparently been nosing around the building since the story broke about the dead stripper in Brian’s car; though Mother had generously volunteered that I was Brian Malone’s girlfriend and that we had entered his apartment with a key, so we’d done nothing unlawful.

  Great defense, Ma Barker.

  I figure it was the “Malone’s girlfriend” part that had pricked their ears most, considering his name was all over the morning news and had surely been broadcast over the police band.

  We were assured that we didn’t need to lawyer-up, which didn’t stop Cissy from dropping the name “J. D. Abramawitz” enough times to ensure we were treated with kid gloves—meaning, no one had been frisked, bopped with a baton, or handcuffed—which confirmed that they didn’t really want us, per se.

  They seemed more interested in playing “Where’s Waldo?” Or, rather, “Where’s Malone-o?” Even after I insisted I had no clue where he was hiding—if that’s what he was doing—and how badly I wanted to find him myself.

  I had high hopes that I could convince the police that Brian was a victim of circumstance and possibly in grave danger, something I made clear to them from the get-go.

  Only my pleas fell on deaf ears.

  Just minutes into our impromptu gabfest, I realized quite clearly that Brian’s well-being wasn’t foremost on their minds. They saw him as a suspect in a heinous crime, nothing more and nothing less.

  “So he called you last night?” one of the Dallas detectives asked—a fellow with dark curls and a stocky build who introduced himself as Duane Swiercynski. I’d already nicknamed him “Starsky,” as it was a whole lot easier to handle. “What exactly did he say?”

  Like it hadn’t been embarrassing enough repeating his “I hereby dump thou” message to my mother.

  So I repeated the conversation, as close to word-for-word as I could recall.

  I explained, too, the part about the cabbage soup, what I thought it meant, and how Malone had marked off the coming weekend on his calendar for my birthday, which merely earned me long, silent stares and got my hackles up.

  I wasn’t a liar, but they sure didn’t seem to believe a thing I said.

  Cissy appeared upset enough to rap them all upside the head with her umbrella, and I’m sure she would have if they hadn’t confiscated it from her after the brouhaha in Malone’s hallway when they’d threatened to cuff her (while Mother threatened to report their bad behavior to the pearl-wearing mummy of the president, which no doubt had them shaking in their cowboy boots).

  The blond Dallas detective set his hands on his knees and leaned toward me. Let’s call him “Hutch,” because his name, like Starsky’s, had more consonants than any Wheel of Fortune puzzle, and I wasn’t sure I could pronounce it without tripping over my tongue.

  “So, Ms. Kendricks,” Hutch drawled, “you believe your boyfriend is in peril, and he conveyed this to you through a phone call where he noted that he wanted space and mentioned your mother’s homemade cabbage soup. Did I get that right?”

  “My mother’s allergic to cabbage, and Brian knew it,” I told them, eager to get this ironed out so they’d grasp the concept that Malone needed their help, not an all-points-bulletin.

  “Don’t you see? He was trying to tell me he’s in trouble. He was stammering, too, and he only does that when he’s under extreme stress. Plus, I found a birthday card he meant to give me, signed, ‘I love you.’ ”

  “A birthday card?” Hutch looked ready to laugh.

  “Yes.” What? Were they hard of hearing?

  “Anything more substantial to go on than that, little lady?” Detective Smart-Ass asked.

  The “little lady” bit nearly made me spit nails.

  “Malone could be as dead as that stripper, but none of

  you seem to care a fig about that, do you?” I came up out of my chair. Only Mother’s arm kept me from leaping atop the blond cop and pulling the rug off his head.

  My God, didn’t they get it?

  My boyfriend might already be dog meat, yet they couldn’t see any further than Trayla Trash.

  “Should I go over it one more time?” I volunteered, my teeth gritted.

  The Addison police captain—a woman with steely gray hair and a seemingly permanent frown—sighed her disapproval.

  “If you don’t mind, Miss Kendricks, we’d prefer not wasting time yammering about stuttering and Hallmark cards. There’s a lot at stake here, and we can’t do much good if you won’t cooperate with us.”

  A lot at stake? Isn’t that what I’d been trying to tell them?

  If they wanted cooperation, they weren’t doing much to invite it.

  Was it improper to bark at people with badges? Because I was on the verge of a warning growl before I bit them all in the ass.

  What kind of proof did they require to rest assured I was being as forthcoming as all get-out? A promise to turn over my firstborn to be raised by drill sergeants at the Police Academy?

  “What makes you think I’m hiding something?” I demanded,

  because I didn’t appreciate being second-guessed.

  Heck, I’d even clued them in to Malone’s trip to The Men’s Club with Matty and each potential misstep that had followed after. Figuratively speaking, my pockets were empty. They could turn me upside down and shake me, and only lint would fall out.

  “I don’t believe you’re being candid with us, Ms. Kendricks.

  I think you’re protecting your boyfriend.” The police captain folded her arms on her desk and stared at me sternly, like she could hypnotize me into submission.

  “This will go a lot faster if you share everything you know about Mr. Malone.”

  Share everything I knew?

  Like Brian’s favorite food, which was toasted ravioli; some kind of St. Louis specialty. Or maybe they’d like to hear his favorite color, which I pegged as navy blue, judging from the hue of most of his suits, though I wasn’t a hundred percent on that. Oh, oh, or the unimaginative name he’d given his Acura? Red Car.

  Because I had zip to give them regarding his whereabouts.

  If I knew where he was, why would I have been snooping around his apartment, with my mother playing palace guard in the hallway?

  “Were you aware that Mr. Malone was involved with the murder victim?” Hutch of the blond hair and scraggly mustache asked.

  “You’re talking about the stripper from The Men’s Club,

  Trayla Trash, right?” I said, earning me a pair of raised eyebrows. “That’s who you found in his trunk, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t add that I knew she’d been beaten with a golf club, which may or may not have been a Big Bertha. Like Mother had always said about sequins, sometimes less was plenty.

  Hutch cleared his throat and tucked a finger beneath his collar, neck turning ruddy, probably wondering how I knew as much as I did. “Uh, we haven’t released the name of the victim to the public yet, ma’am, and the fact that you’re familiar with one of her known aliases makes me wonder if you haven’t had a little chat with your on-the-lam boyfriend.”

  Known aliases?

  Not stage names?

  Sounded like there was more to Trayla Trash than her skimpy costumes.

  “Like I told you, I haven’t chatted with Brian, not since Saturday afternoon, and, for the record, I don’t believe Brian was involved with Ms. Trash, not in the way you imagi
ne,” I said firmly, my cheeks tight and angry, doubtless reflecting the expressions on their similarly unsmiling faces. “He wasn’t dating her or anything.”

  “Do you realize his business card was found on her person?”

  Hutch pressed me, and I did a double take.

  “On her person?” I repeated. “But wasn’t she found buck-naked?”

  Was his card stuck in a pocket that wasn’t really a pocket?

  Oh, my.

  “Seems like you know an awful lot about the crime scene, little lady.” The cop I’d dubbed Hutch obviously relished the role of bad cop. Or “worse cop,” anyway.

  “I only know what I saw on TV,” I shot back.

  “We’ll be looking into Mr. Malone’s finances,” Hutch continued, “and if we turn up anything that ties him to our victim, he’s up shit creek without a canoe, much less a paddle.”

  “Are you suggesting he gave her money? Because he didn’t,” I insisted. “He was paying off his student loans and what he borrowed for the Acura, so there’s no way he could’ve sprung for so much as a tassel of her bimbo attire.”

  I nearly bit my tongue in two to keep from snapping at the not-so-nice officers.

  “He didn’t pay for her tassels, huh?” Hutch said, and gave Starsky an exaggerated eye roll to the effect of How stupid are chicks? without having to utter a word.

  I sat on my hands to keep from swinging a fist in his direction.

  This was getting me nowhere. I had to calm down. I had a few questions of my own that I wanted answered, and I wasn’t about to let their rude behavior stop me.

  “Can you tell me if you found his day runner or his briefcase?” I asked, as benignly as possible. “He might’ve had some documents with him that could help us figure out why he’s missing. They have to do with a case he’s involved in. And what about blood? Did you find any of his in the car? Was there any sign of a struggle?” My voice rose, exposing my fear, and I had plenty to go around.

  “Were his keys in the ignition? Was the seat set back or moved up, because then you’d know if he was driving or not, right?”

  Again, the police officers shared a communal glance before the cop with dark curls crossed his arms over his chest and dared to address me.